I think this is an appropriate place to thank all of the Economist's America correspondents, as well as the regular commenters in here, for their excellent and (sometimes sickeningly) comprehensive coverage of this historic election. The live blogging was easily the media highlight for me throughout. Looking forward to the next four years!

maybe the present unstable situation requires us keep a wait-and-see attitude for that,and obama as the 44th president of America who will bring good luck or doom to the world of people is still an unknown question! isn't that?

Thanks Ol' McCreedy. You support my point. I'm not trying to over-react, but the character of a person, experience, and duty to country do not seem to matter. You just need to have a silver tongue and promise the world to everyone but the top 5% money earners. You're right, to my point, all of Obama's supporters are in for a surprise. We didn't move closer to racial integration. We proved tonight that a group of folks, to the tune of 95% took nothing but color into account when voting. How sad?

When the moon is in the Seventh HouseAnd Jupiter aligns with MarsThen peace will guide the planetsAnd love will steer the starsThis is the dawning of the age of AquariusThe age of AquariusAquarius!Aquarius!Harmony and understandingSympathy and trust aboundingNo more falsehoods or derisionsGolden living dreams of visionsMystic crystal revelationAnd the mind's true liberationAquarius!Aquarius!When the moon is in the Seventh HouseAnd Jupiter aligns with MarsThen peace will guide the planetsAnd love will steer the starsThis is the dawning of the age of AquariusThe age of AquariusAquarius!Aquarius!:)

Great speech. As scripted as American politics may be, this was history in the making, to talk to the grandkids about. Here is looking forward to a president that motivates when he speaks, who I learn from while he talks.

Oh dear God, now we get to reinject Wolf Blitzer after all that glitz. I feel like someone's dumped a privy on me.And silencing boos would be hard. But I feel like it's one of those things where, if you feel it in the moment, it would work just fine. And something tells me that McCain had it in him. But he either didn't have it in him tonight or he didn't act on the moment. It would have been a pretty proud moment, I think, if he had. Kind of like he could have had a (very) proud moment if when he took the microphone away from that lady at a rally-thing when she said Obama was a Muslim. If only McCain had thought to say, "There is nothing wrong with being a Muslim" instead of immediately defending Obama as a family man.

McCreedy, to unpack the "Not my president" sentiments that followed 2000 a little bit, my impression was that they were driven by two things: 1) The fact that Bush lost the popular vote and 2) That his electoral victory rested on Florida's voting mess. I found all the t-shirts annoying after awhile, but given what happened in Florida that election, from Kathleen Harris to black voters being turned away from the polls because they were mistaken for felons, I don't think the anger over the result was unreasonable.

You're probably right, la chevre. It is pretty classless to boo at a time like that, especially a historic election like this. I just think the two parties have a tendency to ascribe much more extreme views to each other than is warranted. But they shouldn't be booing. I just don't know what McCain could have done about it without looking like an ass. Anyway, that was a great speech by Obama. I'm looking forward to great things.

I think Prof. Kerr gets it about right. Now it's the Republican's turn to criticize executive power, and the Democrat's turn to perpetuate it.http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2008_11_02-2008_11_08.shtml#1225858249